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Rolls-Royce regret over A380 engine failure

Rolls-Royce says it "regrets" the mid-air failure of one of its Trent 900 engines on a Qantas A380 in November 2010.

The explosion in the engine forced an emergency landing by the superjumbo and resulted in the temporary grounding of the carrier’s fleet of A380s.

Rolls-Royce issued a statement after Australia's transport safety regulator blamed the failure on a fatigue crack in an oil feed pipe in the engine.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said the pipe was made with a thin wall section and "did not comply" with the design specifications.

"The thin wall substantially increased the likelihood of fatigue cracking," the ATSB said in its final report on the incident.

Rolls-Royce said that it supported the findings of the ATSB.

It said the pipe was "one of a small number which had been incorrectly manufactured as a result of a measurement error during a precision drilling procedure", but added that it had since taken measures to prevent such incidents from happening, the BBC reported.

Engineering and technology director Colin Smith said: "This was a serious and rare event which we very much regret.

"At Rolls-Royce we continually strive to meet the high standards of safety, quality and reliability that our customers and their passengers are entitled to expect. On this occasion we clearly fell short.

"We support the ATSB's conclusions and, as the report notes, have already applied the lessons learned throughout our engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance procedures to prevent this type of event from happening again," he added.

Rolls-Royce later agreed to pay A$95 million in compensation to Qantas.

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